"Jacqueline Lichtenberg - Dushau Trilogy 02 - Farfetch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lichtenberg Jacqueline)

agony.

By the glow of those blood-red sparks and the faint emergency lights Krinata Zavaronne could see a
small puddle of her own red blood spreading to mix with the deep purple blood of the warm Dushau
body she sprawled against. Dying.
No! Not dead yet! We survived the crash!

Driven by sharp urgency, she fought for consciousness, fastening on the nonhuman rhythm of Dushau
breathing, groping for the scintillating thrill of the curious psychic resonance she'd once shared with two
Dushau.

But her eyes drooped shut, and she slipped back into darkness, swept into what seemed only a dream.

Dazzling sand dunes marched away into the mauve-hazed distance. An unforgiving copper fireball
of a sun beat from the bare magenta sky. A small metal sliver lay half buried. in a large dune. She
became every grain of sand in the desert. She тАвwas the metal sliver, and the sky and sun, air and
sand, balanced in ecstasy, celebrating within herself, the perfection of the Celestial Artist.

Then, subtly, the vision changed.

Death baked the hollow sliver and the protoplasm within. The huge dune ached to swallow the
sliver and heal the wound the foreign thing had made in it.

In the far distance a sinister dirty haze smeared the horizon. A vibration in the sands identified it
even as vision expanded to encompass it: sandstorm.

But it was veering away from the metal sliver. The rage of the dune, which was herself yet
separate from her, reached out and dragged the scouring menace toward the helpless sliver that
was also herself, anticipating a vicious satisfaction, a healing triumph. For a moment she fed all
her energies into the dune's effort to cleanse itself, and the hissing, seething wind that moved
mountains swerved toward the sliver.

Within the turbulent wall of sand, a face appearedтАФa Dushau woman, young, elegant, bitterly
hostile. The face withered with illness before her eyes, becoming suddenly familiar. It was the face
she'd seen on the viewscreen as she'd fired on the Emperor's flagship, Desdinda's face, come to life
to wreak her sworn vengeance.

Krinata squirmed and wrenched and beat free of the nightmare, pursued by the rising howl of the
anguished winds, a howl of betrayal. "How could you!"

The keening wail of storm faded to the electronic sound of the computer's agony. She put one hand to
her forehead and found a bruised slash. Head injury. That explains it. The helpless fear and rage had
nothing to do with her real self. Already the details of the nightmare were gone.

She wiped blood from one eyelid and focused her eyes on the whirling kaleidoscope of colored
shapesтАФdie bridge monitor displays and control stations of Ephemeral Truth. It all began to come back
to her. They had outraced the Allegiancy Empire's Squadron, found this system, and crash-landed the
orbit-only ship. And we made it!

She pulled herself up, holding her breath against the pain in head and ribs, and found the bleeding gash on